The second day of our Northwest adventure, Saturday July 5th was easily one of my favorite days of the trip.
The day started by meeting up with Vadim and Nathaniel, and heading to the Columbia River Gorge Area for some exploring.
We started the day at the Oneonta Gorge, climbing over huge piles of logs, and soaking our feet in frigid water to see the gorge (pictured below):
Nathaniel in the Oneonta Gorge
After seeing the gorge, we headed back to the trailhead for a soaked shoe hike up to Triple Falls. The hike wasn't long, but it was pretty steep and filled with a lot of switchbacks. Upon reaching the Triple Falls though it was definitely well worth it.
Go Pro Selfie taking ensued and we enjoyed an hour or so at the top of Triple Falls
Once we made our way down from Triple Falls, we were planning on meeting up with Dmitriy, along with Veronica and Sam, in an attempt to surprise Nathaniel, who hadn't seen them in a long time.
In a failed attempt to keep Nathaniel from knowing we drove past the three of them heading to the vista house and they were driving the opposite direction. Given the fact that Nathaniel is the most observant person I have ever met, of course he saw them in their car and started screaming their names.
So from there we all made our way up to the Vista house and trespassed on a posted ridge, which we later got yelled at for by some man in a volunteer vest.
But of course we got another epic go pro selfie courtesy of Vadim, and it's one of my favorite pictures from the trip. We were all feet from the sheer cliff face which made it that much cooler
From here we all headed to get lunch at an awesome grilled cheese truck in downtown portland, and made plans to head to the coast.
But before we could head to the coast, Veronica departed for home in Seattle, and Sam informed us about a wedding he needed to attend, but he didn't have a dress shirt for it yet.
Fortunately for him the wedding was exactly on our route to Pacific City on the coast, and after we got him a white dress shirt and dropped him off we were on our way to the coast for sunset.
After an unfortunate 30 min detour due to a bridge closure we finally arrived at Pacific City. We wandered and climbed the rocky coast, saw a whale, and witnessed an epic sunset.
I had a fun little slide down one of the parts of the rocky coast, and managed to escape with only a few scrapes and zero damage to my D610.
Me on the Cape Kiwanda rock taken by Nathaniel
Even the walk back to the car after sunset was incredible. It was the day after the 4th of July and families still lined the beach, setting off fireworks and sitting by their camp fires. The fireworks were reflecting off of the water and wet sand.
It was a beautiful ending to a day that felt like something out of a movie.
Stay tuned for Day 3 of the adventure tomorrow!